Jude blinked up at him but didn’t answer.
“Do you want to lose your magic?” Was that what this was about?
“No. But the Coven is right. I put others in danger.” Jude placed his fingers on the scars on Mack’s throat. “Just being my familiar is putting you at risk. We’re bound—”
“I know the risks. We’re going out to North this afternoon before it gets dark. I suggest you research ways to bind an aufhocker. If you need anything, let me know.” Mack hesitated, caught between needing to kiss Jude but being too annoyed to even want to touch him. He didn’t want to go out there for round two with an aufhocker while being irritated with his witch. He pressed a hard, angry kiss on Jude’s lips then stalked out of the house, swiping up his truck keys as he went.
The slamming of the front door echoed through the house. Jude kept his back to the wall and blew out a breath. He felt Mack’s anger vibrating like a swarm of wasps. It wasn’t until the truck pulled out of the driveway that the emotions that weren’t his faded.
What was left was the discovery that Mack was fighting for him.
No one had ever fought for him.
No one had so completely accepted him for who he was.
He pressed his hand to his crushed lips. No one had ever been quite so furious with him either. He needed to fight for himself and his right to hold on to the magic he’d been born with.
Slowly, he peeled himself off the wall. They didn’t have to kill the aufhocker, they just had to hold it until the Coven arrived. They needed to trap it somehow, and he didn’t think the aufhocker was dumb enough to fall in an animal trap— and if it did it would change size to get free. It would have to be a magical trap.
To find that he’d have to do to the dark Coven sites as there were no spells on the Coven database. He’d need time to practice because trialing a spell on a deadly creature wasn’t the smart thing to do. And he’d need to make sure it was simple and that the things he needed could be bought in town.
He checked his phone. He had about four hours before they needed to leave.
He needed four days.
Mack drove out to Morris’s farm. He parked and let the engine tick and cool for a few minutes before he got out. Morris wasn’t the type to ask too many questions, but he’d still want to know what was going on. Mack didn’t know how to tell the farmer that there was an aufhocker making trouble. Most rational people would laugh and then whisper behind Mack’s back.
He couldn’t sit for much longer without looking like an idiot, or suspicious. If there was anyone else he could ask, he would. He’d even thought about breaking into the vet’s, but that would only set off alarms, and the cops wouldn’t be interested in anything he had to say about hellhounds.
With a growl, he got out of his truck—which now smelled of Jude and his deodorant and hair product—and marched up to Morris’s door. He wasn’t expecting the farmer to be in, but he was hoping his wife was.
Morris answered, and his eyebrows shot up as though Mack was the last person he was expecting to see on his doorstep. “I got no more dead cows.”
“I know. Someone got killed last night.”
“Was only a matter of time.” Morris pulled out a cigarette and lit up. “So what do you need from me? Where’s the investigator?”
“He’s investigating.” Jude had better be doing something other than wallowing in self-pity. Mack pressed his lips together. He needed to be smart about this. “He was wondering if you had a tranquilizer gun so we could remove the problem.”
“And does that problem have a name?”
Mack considered Morris for a moment. “No, but it was put away once before, and something woke it up.”
Morris took a drag on his cigarette and let the smoke coil out of the corner of his mouth. “It’s that damn fracking. It would wake Satan up.”
Fracking. Mack hadn’t thought of that. But if the ground shifted and the five objects used to bind the aufhockers were no longer in the right position, that could explain how the spell had been broken. “You might be right about waking Satan. A tranq gun would help us put him back to bed.”
Morris nodded. “Pity the vet took off. All I’ve got left is two doses.”
“I guess that will have to do.” It was still better than nothing.
Morris went into the house while Mack waited. He could feel the sun inching across the sky as the seconds ticked by. They had to survive the night.
They had to capture the aufhocker so the Coven could splutter and concede defeat.
If they did all of this and they still called Jude a failure, Mack didn’t know what he’d do. He didn’t care if Jude was no longer a witch, but he didn’t think he deserved to be human either.
Morris came back with a gun and two cartridges. “I’ll say a prayer.”
“Thank you.” But he put more faith in the gun and its ability to put cows to sleep.
On the way back into town his phone buzzed with a message from Jude.
Kerosene, salt (lots), box of nails, roll of string, pepper, cloves.
That didn’t sound much like a shopping list for a spell. But then he wasn’t used to helping a witch. He replied. How much salt? Big box of table salt or a bag of salt? How much pepper? Are you sure you aren’t cooking dinner?
Jude’s reply came straight back. Bag of salt, only need a packet of pepper and cloves. You bring dinner home. I’m busy. FYI, you have no salt or pepper left in the pantry.
That he had none left hopefully meant that Jude had been working on
